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While Prime Minister Abiy is rightly congratulated around the world for his domestic and international reforms – culminating in Sunday’s peace deal with Eritrea, signed in Saudi Arabia – at home he is in real trouble.

Ethnic clashes are blighting the country. Some 2.6 million people have been forced to flee their homes.

As one independent site summed up the situation: “There are over 910,000 refugees and approximately 2.6 million IDPs in Ethiopia. Around 1.4 million IDPs were newly displaced due to conflict and violence between January and June 2018.”

Here is a detailed report of clashes outside Addis Ababa.

Source: Ethiopia Observer

Violence and looting on the outskirts of Addis Ababa

September 16, 2018 by Ethiopia Observer 0

A weekend of violence on the outskirts of Addis Ababa left unspecified numbers dead and hundreds displaced, police and witnesses said. A well-organised and ruthless gang prey on residents with knives, stones or iron bars in Ashewa Meda, Burayu, Anfo, Keta and Asko areas of Oromia region, according to multiple witnesses.

The attacks were carried out on Friday and Saturday nights, and according to many accounts had an ethnic and criminal trend, Oromo youths targeting minority Dorze, Gamo, and Wolaita ethnic groups. “They entered to our house and they destroyed all of our property. They torched all the weaving tools with box of matches. Nothing is left.”

Luckily, some neighbours helped us to leave and I fled with my children at around three after midnight,” a distraught man from Dorze tribe in his fifty told the state broadcaster ETV. Most of the Dorzes are engaged in weaving white robe.

“We don’t know who they are. They entered into the house in groups and did a wholescale looting of property, and they attacked us,” another witness, a young woman in her twenties said.

The recently released leader of Ethiopian Muslim community, Ahmedin Jebel wrote on his Facebook page, citing some witnesses that the violence started with a skirmish between the local Oromo and Dorze tribes, which led to the death of two Oromo women. Angry Oromo mob reacted in retaliation, attacking Dorze people and looting their houses and shops, he cited the witnesses. Ahmedin also mentioned about receiving information from several people who said that Oromia police’s inability to decisively deal with the criminal activities and certain community dwellers organizing themselves into vigilante groups to protect themselves and others from the menace.

Terrified residents, most of them from Dorze and Gamo tribe, fled the area following the attack on the following day and around five hundred people including children and women have been given shelter in churches and schools in Addis Ababa. Deputy Mayor of Addis Ababa, Takele Uma Banti who visited a temporary shelter at Kale school this morning tweeted that, “the spate of violence and counterattacks are unacceptable and run contrary to the spirit of medemer, unity, togetherness, and inclusion.” Local administrators have asked aid agencies operating in the area and residents to provide humanitarian assistance.

Residents flee after violence photo Kalkidan Yibelal

The Oromia region Police Commissioner Alemayehu Ejigu told ETV that 70 suspects have been arrested in connection with the violence. He said police is taking steps to restore peace and to return the displaced persons.

The assailants were not identified, but several people on social media and websites pointed fingers at the underground activist networks, known as Qeerroo. “The killings took place as the Qeerroos return home on Saturday to their districts outside the capital after taking part at a welcoming rally in Addis Ababa’s central Meskel Square for leaders of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), a group that was in exile for most of its existence,” the Ethiopian Satellite Television and Radio (ESAT) reported.

However, others disagreed. Mohammed Ademo, the founder and editor of OPride.com, said that the organized mob and agent provocateurs represent no one. “They are hired (organized) to sow discord, division and mistrust. Let‘s not fall into their traps. Let’s stop pointing fingers at each other and blaming entire groups of people or communities,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “No one benefits from the lawlessness and rising violence. It will hinder the ongoing reform. It will pull us back to the dark days of mass arrests and military command post,” Mohammed warned.

The incident further heightened security fears, after worsening violence across the country and casts shadow for the reformist leader Abiy Ahmed.

Abiy who is in Saudi Arabia denounced the killings.“Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed strongly condemns the killings and acts of violence against innocent citizens … These cowardly attacks represent a grave concern to the unity and solidarity of our people & will be met with appropriate response,” said Fitsum Arega, the prime minister’s chief of staff, in a tweet.

Source=https://eritreahub.org/ethiopias-somali-rebels-seek-referendum-as-price-for-peace

Source: Bloomberg

Rebels in Eastern Ethiopia to Seek Self-Determination Vote

Nizar Manek

17 September 2018, 00:00 GMT+1Updated on 17 September 2018, 07:36 GMT+1

Group to make the demand at historic talks with government

“We want to achieve self-determination recognized by international law under the current Ethiopian constitution,” Ahmed Yassin Abdi, the ONLF’s foreign secretary, said by phone from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. “We want our people to have a right to decide.”

A rebel group in Ethiopia said it will demand a referendum on self-determination for the country’s troubled, gas-rich Somali region during landmark peace talks with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government.

The plan by the Ogaden National Liberation Front, which has staged a low-level insurgency in Ethiopia’s east for more than three decades, comes as Abiy invites once-banned opponents to take part in elections. The demands may aggravate a scramble for the region’s energy resources, including natural gas reserves the government estimates will eventually earn it $7 billion a year.

At stake are an estimated 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Ogaden Basin, where exports are due to begin 2021 via a pipeline to neighboring Djibouti. A unit of China Poly Group Corp. has also started testing oil deposits.

“We want to achieve self-determination recognized by international law under the current Ethiopian constitution,” Ahmed Yassin Abdi, the ONLF’s foreign secretary, said by phone from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. “We want our people to have a right to decide.” He said his group has no preconditions for the talks. The region’s new president expressed support for greater autonomy.

Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous country after Nigeria, is a federation designed to give autonomy to its dozens of ethnic groups. The ONLF has long maintained that the Somali regional state, which it calls the Ogaden and borders war-torn Somalia, hasn’t been properly represented by the federal government.

Ethiopia’s constitution enshrines the rights of people with “a large measure” of common culture, customs, language, identity and “psychological makeup” in an “identifiable, predominantly contiguous territory” to seek self-determination and even establish their own states.

Seeking Settlement

The ONLF, which took up arms in 1984 and has been an intermittent threat to regional authorities, declared a cease-fire at a July meeting of its leaders in Eritrea, pending what Ahmed calls an unspecified “comprehensive political settlement.”

Its largest attack was in April 2007 on a site in the Somali region — operated by China’s Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau — where it killed nine Chinese workers and 65 Ethiopians. Ahmed said that was justified because the then-government sought to produce gas “without consent of our people.”

While he wouldn’t disclose the number of armed fighters the ONLF has, the figure is thought to be significantly diminished from a decade ago.

A special police force in the Somali region has been notorious for its alleged counter-insurgency tactics, with accusations it jailed and tortured people suspected of having ONLF sympathies. Since the regional president, based in the local city of Jijiga, was ousted by federal forces in August, authorities and the group haven’t clashed, according both to Ahmed and the new state president, Mustafa Omer.

“There are some areas where we agree,” Mustafa said in an interview in the national capital, Addis Ababa. “Yes, we want more autonomy for our region, genuine self-rule.”

While the cease-fire predates Mustafa’s rule as a response to Ethiopia’s recent sweeping reforms, the ONLF is supporting the new president because “he can make a difference in clearing the system and creating a new political environment,” Ahmed said. “We have agreed to work together to seek more rights for the Somali people.”

Abdiwasa Abdillahi Bade, an assistant professor of political science at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia’s capital, doesn’t see “a clear vision and objective” from the group. “Before we talk about self-determination, we have to establish who is ONLF and who represents ONLF,” Abdiwasa said.

Mustafa said regional authorities are letting the ONLF mobilize grassroots support and he’ll help arrange its formal talks with Abiy’s government in the coming weeks. The president welcomed the possibility of the ONLF taking part in federal elections slated for 2020.

Ahmed said the ONLF will discuss the possibility of its disarmament with the government, and, should the negotiations face difficulty, Somalia President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed has offered support in the talks. Once a deal is reached, the ONLF may compete in elections, he said.

“We need to have a negotiation — agreement on a comprehensive political settlement, and peace in the Ogaden — then oil companies can come and explore,” Ahmed said.

Source=https://eritreahub.org/ethiopias-somali-rebels-seek-referendum-as-price-for-peace